He said it with a warmth which was certainly unconventional.  Frida coloured and looked embarrassed.  There was no denying he was certainly a most strange and untrammelled person.

“And if I might venture on a hint,” Philip put in, with a hasty glance at his companion’s extremely unsabbatical costume, “it would be that you shouldn’t try to go out much to-day in that suit you’re wearing; it looks peculiar, don’t you know, and might attract attention.”

“Oh, is that a taboo too?” the stranger put in quickly, with an anxious air.  “Now, that’s awfully kind of you.  But it’s curious, as well; for two or three people passed my window last night, all Englishmen, as I judged, and all with suits almost exactly like this one—­which was copied, as I told you, from an English model.”

“Last night; oh, yes,” Philip answered.  “Last night was Saturday; that makes all the difference.  The suit’s right enough in its way, of course,—­very neat and gentlemanly; but not for Sunday.  You’re expected on Sundays to put on a black coat and waistcoat, you know, like the ones I’m wearing.”

Bertram’s countenance fell.  “And if I’m seen in the street like this,” he asked, “will they do anything to me?  Will the guardians of the peace—­the police, I mean—­arrest me?”

Frida laughed a bright little laugh of genuine amusement.

“Oh, dear, no,” she said merrily; “it isn’t an affair of police at all; not so serious as that:  it’s only a matter of respectability.”

“I see,” Bertram answered.  “Respectability’s a religious or popular, not an official or governmental, taboo.  I quite understand you.  But those are often the most dangerous sort.  Will the people in the street, who adore Respectability, be likely to attack me or mob me for disrespect to their fetich?”

“Certainly not,” Frida replied, flushing up.  He seemed to be carrying a joke too far.  “This is a free country.  Everybody wears and eats and drinks just what he pleases.”

“Well, that’s all very interesting to me,” the Alien went on with a charming smile, that disarmed her indignation; “for I’ve come here on purpose to collect facts and notes about English taboos and similar observances.  I’m Secretary of a Nomological Society at home, which is interested in pagodas, topes, and joss-houses; and I’ve been travelling in Africa and in the South Sea Islands for a long time past, working at materials for a History of Taboo, from its earliest beginnings in the savage stage to its fully developed European complexity; so of course all you say comes home to me greatly.  Your taboos, I foresee, will prove a most valuable and illustrative study.”

“I beg your pardon,” Philip interposed stiffly, now put upon his mettle.  “We have no taboos at all in England.  You’re misled, no doubt, by a mere playful facon de parler, which society indulges in.  England, you must remember, is a civilised country, and taboos are institutions that belong to the lowest and most degraded savages.”